Episode 73 — The Deep Sea of Omniscience and Depleted Mental Resources

Possessing the "omniscience of the world" is a salvation, but it is also synonymous with stepping into a bottomless quagmire.

2:00 AM. The air in the study was slightly distorted by the heat vented from my high-end PC, and my vision flickered from the irritation of the blue light. My triple monitors were filled with thumbnails of over four thousand shots of "despair" that Elishua had obsessively captured. They were less like image data and more like a cursed log file recording the slow death of a village.

"Damn, my eyes are slipping. This is an information overflow."

I applied some eye drops and pressed hard against the corners of my aching eyes. The internet has everything. But to derive the correct answer that matches the "bug right in front of you" from that vast sea consumes too many of the searcher's resources—time, spirit, and reading comprehension.

First, I started by organizing the jumbled image data into a meaningful structure. The digital camera doesn't have GPS. I reconstructed a map of the village's farmland in my head based on the shapes of the trees, the placement of rocks, and the length of the shadows in the background of the photos, forcibly linking them with timestamps and location data.

(Nutrient deficiency? A virus? Fungi? Or maybe soil pH levels?)

Searching for "fruit tree blight patterns" brought up millions of hits. However, most of the results were based on the common sense of my old world. In a situation where I didn't even know which species the plants of this world corresponded to on Earth, ninety percent of that data turned into noise.

"In the end, I just have to look for the footprints."

I selected a photo of a fruit from a relatively mildly affected area, where Elishua had left a note saying "The beginning of the curse." Zoom in. Zoom in more. Zoom in again.

The pixels began to break, and the image became a storm of static. I opened my RAW development software, adjusted the contrast, filtered out specific color ranges, and pushed the edge enhancement to the limit. The computational resources of my PC groaned as they attempted to unearth the "physical reality" hidden within the image.

Finally, after three hours had passed. The AI upscaling was complete, and there it was, sitting within the reconstructed, crystal-clear image.

A gap in the stem of the fruit. Something that would have looked like nothing more than a "microscopic speck of dirt" to elven eyes or magical vision—an unnatural "shadow" only a few pixels wide. Tiny eggs coated in mucus. And the gruesome traces of a "jaw" that looked as if it had chewed through the plant tissue.

"It’s not a curse. It’s just unauthorized access. A pest."

Having identified the "signatures" of the culprit, I dove deeper into the sea of information. From here, it was a brute-force attack with keywords.

"White cotton, sap-sucking, fruit trees."

"Boring moth, larvae."

"Tropical rainforest, agriculture, total wipeout."

I read through everything I could find: agricultural guidance manuals, university papers, and old blogs written by farmers in tropical regions. I ran my translation printer at full capacity, devouring the mountain of information it spat out.

Cocoa pod borer (a moth larva that bores into fruit).

Mealybugs (which suck sap and induce disease).

A system crash caused by multiple factors overlapping and breaching the village's "firewall." That was the true identity of the unreasonable despair they called the wrath of the spirits.

"I’ve found the cause. But... there’s no patch."

Make pesticides? Considering the size of the village and the fact that this world doesn't even have sprayers, making something like that would be the height of inefficiency. One wrong application and I could crash the entire Ecosystem OS.

I sank even deeper into the deep sea of omniscience. What I wanted was a low-cost, sustainable security program that could "autonomously eliminate enemies."

And then—at dawn. A single citation from an old document appeared within the pale blue light of the monitor.

"304 AD, Nanfang Caomu Zhuang, China. Pest control for citrus trees using Weaver Ants (Oecophylla smaragdina)."

"Ants...?"

I dug deeper. It was the oldest yet most modern "biological pesticide," still used today in African cocoa plantations. They build nests in the trees, possess an insanely strong sense of territoriality, and spend their time predating every pest that crosses their path. A twenty-four-hour patrol squad.

The tiny life forms that the elves likely looked down upon as "just bugs" were, in fact, the "optimized code" meant to save this forest.

"This is it."

I couldn't help but let out a dry laugh.

Before I knew it, the world outside the window was beginning to brighten. The bag of potato chips remained open, but I hadn't eaten a single one. My cola was lukewarm and completely flat.

"Meow."

Tama had snuck into the study at some point and was looking up at me from the base of my chair with an exasperated expression.

"Tama. I spent the whole night researching the ecology of ants. This isn't the kind of work a thirty-six-year-old shut-in should be doing in another world."

I leaned back deep into my chair, my stiff neck popping. From the deep sea of the omniscient internet, I had finally hooked a "single truth."

But the real trouble starts here.

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